Introduction:
The OpenData Community has been making remarkable strides in fostering collaboration, innovation, and the democratization of data analysis. With recent successful initiatives such as the Regen Rangers hackathon and the Sandbox initiative for supporting useful software projects, the community may be able to do even more in the future to help protect web3 through data science and the support of decentralized data. In this post, I further review recent activities and discuss possible next milestones for the community.
Ongoing Hackathon: Regen Rangers
At the heart of the OpenData Community’s recent endeavors is the Regen Rangers hackathon. With a focus on leveraging OpenSource algorithms, this hackathon has attracted enthusiastic participation from data scientists and developers alike; there was even a challenge for contributors to write essays on decentralization and on the likely impact of ChatGPT and similar approaches to Sybil detection and prevention. Notably, the Regen Rangers hackathon received substantial support, with $42k in funding and sponsorship from prominent organizations such as POKT, Gitcoin, Ocean Protocol, and TrueBlocks.
The Regen Rangers hackathon includes challenges whereby contestants analyze grants and grant rounds, employing both existing and new algorithms aptly referred to as “Legos.” This initiative showcases the community’s commitment to utilizing open data for the greater good, and the engagement of judges from Gitcoin, Ocean Protocol, TrueBlocks, and Pantera Capital adds credibility and expertise to the process.
Support of Sandbox Projects
The OpenData Community has assisted in the emergence of several sandbox projects, which have received additional support through the recent Gitcoin public goods funding round. These projects exemplify the community’s dedication to nurturing software development and innovation. You can read more about the Sandbox effort here:
https://github.com/OpenDataforWeb3/sandbox
Let’s take a quick look at a couple of notable Sandbox projects:
- Grants Dashboard Project:
This project aims to create a comprehensive and user-friendly dashboard to streamline the management and analysis of grants. By leveraging open data, the Grants Dashboard project seeks to enhance transparency, accountability, and efficiency within the web3 grant ecosystem.
Please learn more about the Grants Dashboard project here:
- Sybil Scorer:
The Sybil Identification Framework addresses the challenge of identifying fake or duplicate identities within the community. By employing advanced techniques and leveraging open data sources, this project strives to maintain the integrity and trustworthiness of the OpenData Community.
Please learn more about the Sybil Scorer project here:
Future Priorities and Strategies
Building on the recent accomplishments, the OpenData Community has discussed several key priorities and strategies to advance its mission further. Let’s delve into the next set of activities expected from the community:
- Sharing the Results of Regen Rangers
The OpenData Community is committed to sharing the insights, analyses, and solutions generated through the Regen Rangers hackathon. By disseminating this valuable information, the community seeks to foster collaboration and further improve its partnerships with Gitcoin and other stakeholders. Additionally, the community aims to collaborate with projects focused on analyzing wash trading and airdrop farming in web3, expanding the reach and impact of open data analysis.
- Strategic Partnerships and Guidance
The OpenData Community is in the process of establishing relationships with founding partners who will provide strategic guidance. These partnerships will be pivotal in shaping the community’s trajectory, fostering innovation, and driving impactful initiatives forward.
- People Pipelines and Governance
To strengthen its talent pool and governance framework, the OpenData Community will establish on-chain pipelines for both Regen Rangers and OpenData Community Jedi. Leveraging the Hats Protocol, the community will trial a permissionless system, allowing aspiring members to earn credits by participating in hackathons or organizing community events. Full-fledged membership and complete governance rights will be attained through continued contributions, peer voting, and commitment to oaths. The integration of Hats will automate certain privileges, such as becoming signers on a multi-sig for season-based budgeting.
- Between Hackathon Contributions:
With the small amount of ongoing funding expected from founding partners and hackathons and any contributions from growing Sandbox projects and other community members, the OpenData Community intends to deliver on a handful of projects between the quarterly hackathons. Our priorities include:
Grants screening & review:
The need for a Grants Dashboard - and related algorithms and runbooks - to enable communities to run their own grants programs and rounds has never been more clear.
However, across the non-profit and public goods markets, there exists some concern about how to measure impact. Without a common set of approaches it is extremely difficult to provide automated input into a Grants screening and review process beyond the basics.
The Hypercerts foundation and approach offers a standard structure that can be used for providers of value to attest to their efforts and for independent reviewers or validators to then confirm or modify those claims.
The hypercert primitive may enable the use of blockchain as an independent ledger to measure impact, as validated by a set of oracles and experts. Our interest in the OpenData Community includes:
- Using Hypercerts in Grants screening and validation
- Validating the use of Hypercerts themselves - watching the watchers
- Minting Hypercerts for hackathon participants and others
Broaden the scope of anti-Sybil activities:
There are a growing number of projects and commercial entities and contributors leveraging the OpenData Community to protect web3 activities. We would like to further accelerate these efforts between hackathons, utilizing such approaches as:
- Retroactive bounties and funding
- Collaboration with partners to design future hackathons and bounties
Training and discussions:
The OpenData Community conducts one or two sessions during most weeks with interesting projects and community members. Recently these projects started to include more hands-on sessions in the community Discord, such as demonstrations by data scientists of their craft. These events seem to be valued by the community and also often result in more substantive discussions about the future direction of the OpenData Community hackathons and development efforts.
Conclusion:
The OpenData Community has achieved product or project market fit in its first several months. As we solidify our foundation we are growing in our ability to help to defend web3 through an inclusive, non-commercial, grassroots approach.
Your input and feedback are valuable - this is your community, and the risks to web3 are all too real. Please do get engaged however you are able and together we will defend web3 from the dual risks of Sybil and other attacks and centralization at the data layer.